A journey into the world’s original extreme sport: downhill
ski racing.

Harnessing nature’s most powerful forces, elite downhillers
descend icy, rugged slopes at speeds cresting 90 miles per
hour. For decades, American skiers struggled to match their
European counterparts, and until this century the US Ski
Team could not claim a lasting foothold on the roof of the
Alps, where the sport’s legends are born.

Then came a fledgling class of American racers that
disrupted the Alpine racing world order. Led by Bode Miller
and Lindsey Vonn, Julia Mancuso and Ted Ligety, this band of
iconoclasts made a place for their country on some of the
world’s most prestigious race courses. Even as new
technology amplified the sport’s inherent danger, the US Ski
Team learned how to win, and they changed downhill racing
forever.

The Fall Line is the story of how it all came together, a
deeply reported reconstruction of ski racing’s most dramatic
season. Drawing on more than a decade of research and candid
interviews with some of the sport’s most elusive figures,
award-winning journalist Nathaniel Vinton reveals the untold
story of how skiers like Vonn and Miller, and their peers
and rivals, fought for supremacy at the Olympic Winter Games.

Here is an authoritative portrait of a group of men and
women taking mortal risks in a bid for sporting glory. A
white-knuckled tour through skiing’s deep traditions and
least-accessible locales, The Fall Line opens up the sexy,
high-stakes world of downhill skiing―its career-ending
crashes, million-dollar sponsorship deals, international
intrigue, and showdowns with nature itself.

With views from the starting gate, the finish line, and
treacherous turns in between, The Fall Line delivers the
adrenaline of one of the world’s most beautiful and perilous
sports alongside a panoramic view of skiing’s past, present,
and future.